


Pansy Parkinson's Big Romantic Crush

by nnozomi



Series: orchestra'verse [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 02:45:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4205022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nnozomi/pseuds/nnozomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five pureblood witches have a Shakespeare study group for their Muggle Studies class. Pansy finds inspiration, Parvati appreciates a good romance, Susan has no time for ingenues, Millie waits patiently for everyone else to catch on, and Padma’s feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pansy Parkinson's Big Romantic Crush

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the orchestra'verse. Thanks to Raven (singlecrow) for helpful advice. Contains (for the record) spoilers for Vikram Seth's _A Suitable Boy_.

september: the woodwind witches have a study group

“They’re so silly,” Susan sniffed. “I mean, they act like—like third years. Like third-year Gryffindors, even.” This got concurring nods from two Slytherins and a Ravenclaw; Parvati just sighed.

“They are third-years,” Padma felt compelled to point out, even so. “I mean, Juliet’s supposed to be fourteen. I don’t know how old Romeo was.”

“Old enough to have sword fights all over the main square.” Pansy rolled her eyes. “You’re right, Gryffindors to the core. How tiresome. Aren’t there any plays that are about Slytherins?”

“There’s Iago,” Millie suggested blandly. “Slytherin if ever a man was one.”

“ _Thank_ you for that display of house loyalty,” Pansy snipped.

“We could put on _Othello_ here,” Parvati suggested, brightening. “Zabini could play Othello, and Iago could be Professor Snape!” She and Susan folded up against each other’s shoulders, giggling. It was Padma’s turn to roll her eyes, while Millie just smiled faintly and Pansy glowered.

“Or we could do _Mac_ —“

“The Scottish play!” Susan cut her off.

“Oh _please_ , we’re witches, don’t you think we know a real spell from superstition? Anyway, we could do it, and Professor McGonagall could be the First Witch.”

“When we’re finished reaffirming our House affiliations,” Millie said mildly. “What about the plays with happy endings?”

“Which ones? _Midsummer Night’s Dream_?”

“That nonsense about Amortentia and house elves? No thanks, not for me. I had in mind _Much Ado_.”

“I like that one,” Padma agreed. “Beatrice gets to speak her mind. Although Hero’s such a wimp.”

“No way,” Susan contradicted. “Hero knows just what she’s doing when she faints all over the place at the wedding—how else could she end up looking innocent?”

“You may have some Slytherin in you, Miss Bones,” Pansy murmured.

Susan let that one pass. “And don’t forget, Padma, she’s the one who helps get Beatrice and Benedick together.”

“I love that part,” Parvati agreed. “It’s so romantic, the way it just takes a little nudge for them to figure out how they really feel about each other. Padma, did you eat all the chevda?”

Padma shoved the dish toward her sister; they were sharing with the others a part of the large jar sent by their mother the week before (the family owl put up with this kind of burden in return for generous rewards of puffed rice from the jar). Parvati sorted out a handful of fried lentils and passed the dish on to Millie, who took a palmful.

“Hero…” Pansy eyed the chevda dish thoughtfully, and finally selected a single golden raisin. “You might be right, Susan, she might be more of a Slytherin than she appears at first glance.” (“I didn’t say that!”) “You remember that line, ‘Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps’? That’s a very Slytherin approach.” Her black eyes flicked across the group, and away.

“I’ll stick with Beatrice,” from Padma. “I mean, most of Shakespeare’s women are just insufferable—Cordelia, uurgh!—but Beatrice at least stands up for herself, and doesn’t put her romance ahead of everything else.”

“Like Regan and Goneril,” Millie offered, deadpan, and Susan choked on a mouthful of chevda. Millie did a helpful _Aguamenti_ for her, and shrugged at Padma. “I’m just saying.”

“No, you’re right, but that’s the problem!” Padma sat up straighter. “Regan and Goneril look out for themselves, and what’s wrong with that? Why does Shakespeare make them into—into harridans?”

“What’s a harridan?”

“Professor McGonagall.”

“She is not!”

“What? Scottish?”

“That’s not what harridan means.”

“What _does_ it mean?”

“Pansy in a few years, if she’s not careful.”

“Dream on, dear.”

“I have better things to dream about.”

“Don’t you wish you did?”

“Would you two please lay off the Beatrice-Benedick thing,” Padma said impatiently, scowling at her sister. “Susan, a harridan is—is a woman who is always screeching and complaining, never satisfied, always angry.”

“I’m surprised to hear you say it,” Pansy drawled. “I thought you were the all-women all-the-time girl.”

“I _am_. If you mean I’m a feminist. I’m complaining—I mean, I’m _objecting to_ the way Shakespeare writes his women. Not to the way women really are.”

“I agree with you about the women in _King Lear_ ,” Parvati offered. “Regan and Goneril are just nasty, and Cordelia’s soooo boring. The thing is, there’s Kent! It’s really a play about Kent’s doomed love for Lear!”

Pansy’s exquisitely shaped eyebrows shot up. “Where do you get that one?”

“Isn’t it obvious? ‘Wouldst break my heart?’ ‘I had rather break my own,’” she quoted dreamily. “Imagine someone saying that to you.”

Pansy looked politely blank, possibly imagining it, possibly withholding comment.

“Anyway,” Millie said gently, her deep voice drawing their attention. “Can we take that _Romeo and Juliet_ is right out and _King Lear_ isn’t much better?”

“Fair enough,” Padma judged, ignoring her sister’s _aww._ “So the question is, what do we settle on?”

“ _Twelfth Night_ ,” Pansy proposed. “Viola. Maria. Even Olivia if you look at it the right way.”

“What about them?”

“Smart, sexy, independent, Slytherin female characters, Miss Bones. But don’t worry, there’s the loyalest of loyal Hufflepuffs in there too—and he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend, Parvati, if that makes _you_ happy.”

“Antonio,” Millie agreed. “As much Gryffindor as Hufflepuff, I’d say, charging in where common sense would mandate against it. Isn’t there a bit of a shortage of Ravenclaws, though?”

Padma shrugged. “Personally I’d say Viola is much more Ravenclaw than Slytherin, the way she deals with Orsino and Olivia. Yes, all right, Pansy, I think we could make that one work.”

“Okay, _Twelfth Night_ , so who has what topic?” Susan demanded, all business.

“I’d like to do the songs,” Millie said thoughtfully. “Music in the play. Who is Feste always singing to?”

“Millie, music,” Susan muttered, taking notes. “Me, I think I’ll pass on Antonio. Let me think a little bit. Padma, do you want to do Viola?”

“I don’t know—maybe--“

“I’ll do Viola if you’re not,” Parvati offered. “Viola and Sebastian, maybe.”

“Which one in red and which in blue?” Padma asked ironically, and got a _we’ll talk about this later_ look from her twin sister.

Susan’s quill flicked across the page. “That leaves me and Pansy. Pansy, what have you got in mind? Olivia?”

“Let me think about it,” Pansy said, more abstractedly than was her wont. “There’s so much possibility.”

 

Millicent V. Bulstrode, Year Seven Muggle Studies Final Paper: _If_ Music Be the Food of Love

…Muggles do not seem to have produced any one standard setting for the songs in _Twelfth Night_. With help from the Professor I have been able to listen to several of them, including ones that people think are from the author Shakespeare’s time (or at least sound as if they might be) and ones in more modern musical idioms. Some of them are not bad, but none of them are great music in my opinion. I do not think any of them would have made Orsino or Olivia feel even more in love than they were already. I plan to discuss here why I think Shakespeare might have wanted his audience to focus on the words, not the music, and also to suggest some songs which might do a better job of making people feel more in love…

 

september: pansy parkinson knows she has a crush

Lots of girls want to play the flute. It has a pretty, uncomplicated, sweet tone; you always get the melody; it’s easy to carry around; and everyone, but everyone, looks charming playing it, lips kissing the silver and hair swaying in time. Pansy chose it for the same reasons everyone else did, and she still has her flute and takes it out often enough; but she’s been the orchestra’s piccolo specialist since she was in third year. No one else really likes playing the piccolo, and certainly, Pansy reflects smugly, no one else is as good at it.

But she loves it. It’s little, the smallest instrument in the whole orchestra, but one single piccolo can make its presence felt above sixty other players. You can’t keep a piccolo down.

Pansy likes to think you can’t keep her down, either. Her family is as pureblooded and as well-to-do (“we don’t say _rich_ , dear, it isn’t refined”) as any, except perhaps the Malfoys. She can hold her own in the orchestra, and the marks she gets at the end of each year are a lot higher than most people ever suspect. (“Grubbing for grades like a little Hufflepuff is terribly inappropriate, dear. But never forget, being stupid is for the lower classes.”) And looks…well…she’s more or less come to terms with the fact that she’ll never be beautiful. Not everyone can be, and she has other advantages. But that doesn’t mean she has to be any less beautiful than necessary. So she keeps her sleek dark hair cut chic and elegant, makes her freckles a source of charm rather than a blemish, and every holiday has her uniform tailored to best set off her diminutive, slender, hipless figure. Let everyone looking at her know just what they’re up against.

She got her prize for effort in fourth year, when Draco asked her to the Yule Ball during the international student orchestra festival. All those dazzling French and Russian girls, not to mention a whole castle full of Hogwarts girls in every variety, and it was Pansy Parkinson he chose. Not that anything came of it, in that sense—Draco isn’t her boyfriend now, and never will be. (She supposes he still might be her husband, but that’s tomorrow’s problem.) But he is her friend, the first boy she was ever really friends with. Little by little, in soft half-conversations by the biggest porthole in the common room after everyone else was asleep, they have learned each other’s secrets and helped each other through.

Draco likes to give the impression that he’s effortlessly popular and confident, especially with girls; it’s part of his mystique as the blondest, purest-blooded, cleverest, most magical, most musical boy in Slytherin House, the one nobody should be able to help having a crush on. Some of it comes naturally, Pansy knows, ironically enough the parts other people find the most difficult—he really does play the oboe better than anyone she’s ever met, and beats her own high marks most of the time (he’s only top of the House in Transfiguration and Potions, though—Theo does them both in when it comes to Charms, Blaise usually can’t be bothered but for some reason gets obsessive about Arithmancy, Greg beats everyone hollow at Care of Magical Creatures, and Millie’s steady patience and sharp eyes mean she has an edge on all of them at Herbology). So Draco finds it pretty easy to come off as smart and gifted.

But the other part of it is ninety-five percent a put-on, and Pansy’s the only one who knows it.

The way he’d kissed her at the Yule Ball, back when, was so light and perfunctory she thought for a few weeks he might be realizing he was gay. Careful observation put that idea to rest, though. Draco’s eyes followed the girls, every time, from Pansy herself to their seventh-year prefect, beautiful Fatima Saeed…Natalie Vine-Dyson who was first clarinet that year, Daphne when she dropped her quill in class and bent over to pick it up, Ravenclaw Lisa who was Draco’s main rival in Ancient Runes, Fleur and Ghislaine _and_ Nadia from Beauxbatons, that tall Durmstrang girl, Marketa something, who knew her way around the percussion section better than anyone Pansy had ever seen (Draco wasn’t the only one drooling over her; Ron Weasley hadn’t been able to say a coherent word in her presence the whole time). 

After all, Pansy had been looking in the same places, back then. Not _all_ of them, tall-and-thin like Marketa wasn’t her type and she could see Daphne’s bum in the girls’ dormitory any time she cared to (which she didn’t), but Fatima was so lovely, and Ghislaine’s blue eyes and Natalie’s cheekbones and the way Lisa pushed her hair off her face… .

Ninety-five percent a put-on, right. Marry and continue the line. Draco understands; he picked up on her tentative hints right away. His family is like hers, he didn’t waste time telling her about how she should follow her heart or how times were different now or any of that nonsense. If she has to marry him he’ll understand, but it would be better for him if she doesn’t have to.

Draco was the only person she’d told, back in fifth year, about what he called her big romantic crush (it’s none of those things, she said crossly, and he asked if he should then call it her little sexual fantasy and she hexed him). “When do you even look at her?” he wanted to know. “She sits _behind_ you in orchestra.”

“Gryffindors and Slytherins do have classes together occasionally, you know.”

“I try not to think about it,” he snapped.

Pansy sighed. “Well, I can’t help it.”

“You’ve got it bad, love.”

“I know it!”

“What’s the attraction, anyway? Why not Padma, for that matter? Is the hair that important? Or are you so misguided as to prefer clarinets to oboes?”

Pansy gurgled in spite of herself. “If I were, I wouldn’t dare say it in front of you. The hair, well, yes, that’s one thing.” She sighed again, mentally conjuring up Padma Patil and her short spiky hair, the ends tipped with hot pink whenever she could get away with it (Professor McGonagall found it beyond the pale, but Flitwick let it pass because he approved of the charm Padma used on it). The face might be the same, but it was such a difference from those long, shining raven tresses…God, even in her thoughts she was embarrassed at having come up with such a phrase.

“It all matters,” she said inanely. “You’ll understand when you fall in love.”

“I have better things to do with my time,” Draco sniffed, and they let the conversation drift elsewhere.

But Draco knows his onions when it comes to Pansy Genevieve Clothilde Parkinson, and he’s right. She has it bad.

 

Susan Bones (7H), Year Seven Muggle Studies Final Paper: I May Command Where I Adore

…If we were doing a production of _Twelfth Night_ here, I would rather play Olivia than Viola or Maria. Viola is the main character, but she starts out being shipwrecked, and then only makes one real decision: to dress up as a boy and get a job. Olivia makes all the choices for herself: she says, I am going to mourn for my brother, and she does; she says, I am not going to marry Orsino, and she doesn’t; she says, I want to marry Cesario, and she does. (Well, Sebastian, but he is basically what she had in mind to begin with.) She sorts out Toby’s prank on Malvolio, too. She has agency, and she doesn’t have to make nice with drunken blokes, like Maria, or pretend she is a boy, like Viola, to get it…

 

last april: parvati educates her housemates

“It’s not a problem, for you? Being, you know, lesbian and Indian? I don’t mean to be rude or stupid about it—just, most people in the Muggle world still aren’t…” Hermione floundered.

“Well,” Parvati said equitably, “my parents know I fancy girls. They’re not thrilled about it, but that’s one handy side-effect of having twins—my sister definitely likes boys, so she can provide the necessary next generation. And it’s not as if our religion had one thing or the other to say about it.”

“It’s the grandchildren part that worries them?” Hermione asked, hoping she was being sufficiently tactful.

“Mostly, yeah. What really matters is that I bring the right _kind_ of person home. It’s not so bad if she’s a girl, but she’d better be an Indian girl, ideally Gujarati-speaking, a Vaishya—“

“Come _again_?” from Ron.

“Ignorant Brit. Caste, you’ve heard of the caste system? A witch, of course, although pureblooded or otherwise isn’t very important. Actually, I think they wouldn’t be terribly upset if I dated a Muggle, as long as she could adjust to living in our world. But Indian, that’s nonnegotiable.”

Hermione played with her hair, thinking of her parents and grandparents. “That doesn’t give you a very wide dating pool, does it? At Hogwarts.”

Parvati rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, no. The idea is that Padma and I go back to India for at least a couple of years after we leave, to brush up our Gujarati and learn to be proper Indian homely girls.”

“Homely girls? How do you get homely on purpose? Strike that, _why_?”

“Oh, Ron. Not homely like unattractive. It’s Indian-English for, you know, domestic. Homemakers.”

“Your sister,” Hermione opined, “is no more likely to become a devoted homemaker than she’s likely to become homely in the Western sense.”

“You may have a point,” Parvati sighed. “I think she envies me for liking girls, along those lines, but it’s not something you can, oh, switch on and off.”

“Don’t some people, y’know, like both?” Ron asked, coloring under his freckles.

“Oh yes, but we don’t, it didn’t work out that way.” She shrugged. “You take what you’re given, you know?”

 

Padma Rohit Patil, Year Seven Muggle Studies Final Paper: Do I Stand There?

…Sebastian and Viola are really only identical on the surface. Viola has a lot of agency and acts for herself, dressing up as a boy so she can get a job and telling Orsino and Olivia how she thinks they should be behaving. She even gets to choose when and how she goes back to being a girl. Sebastian just follows Antonio around, and then switches to following Olivia around instead. You could say that he is a very docile “feminine” type, if that weren’t a pernicious stereotype common to Muggles and witches alike. So this paper is going to address the question of whether Shakespeare is reversing masculine and feminine stereotypes in Viola and Sebastian, or subverting them, or…

 

october: parvati and padma consider the curriculum

“But say what you will, it’s still dead white men, you know? The Muggle Studies syllabus is even worse than the wizarding one that way, at least we learn about plenty of witches in history, even if they were all white.”

“Well, we’re in Britain, you know,” Parvati pointed out equably. “If we were going to school in India, we’d learn about Indian witches then.”

“In this day and age, that’s no excuse,” Padma sniffed. “And I mean, Shakespeare, it’s all very well, but there’s exactly one non-white character we’ve read about and that’s _Othello_ , for heaven’s sake. Not exactly my idea of a role model?”

“So what do you want to read? The _Mahabharata_?”

“Yes! Why shouldn’t British witches and wizards know about it? You’d think there was a law.”

“But so long.” Parvati yawned, patting her mouth delicately with her fingertips.

“So, so what? Even you loved _A Suitable Boy_ , and that’s twelve hundred pages _._ ”

“ _A Suitable Boy_!” Parvati’s eyes sprang open. “That’s what we should read in Muggle Studies. Even Pansy would like it. She’d probably identify with Meenakshi.”

“That’s unfair,” but Padma was giggling. “I think she’s more like Lata’s friend, you know, the medical student? Malati. And Millie’s sort of like Savita.”

“Oh you’re right, I would never have thought of that, but she’s got that ‘keep calm and carry on’ thing. Who else?”

“Luna Lovegood is _obviously_ Kakoli,” Padma offered, and they both fell about. “I expect her to start speaking in Kuku-couplets any day now. And if Millie’s Savita, does that make Longbottom Pran?”

Parvati had to think about that one. “Yes and no…I think Neville’s more like Firoz, honestly. That very calm, sweet personality.”

“But Firoz gets all intense, too. Over Maan and the singer.”

“Well, so can Neville be intense, I think. We just don’t see it very often. What about Maan? Does he have a Hogwarts equivalent?”

“Draco Malfoy,” Padma groaned. “Clearly. But listen, Pari, we couldn’t read that in Muggle Studies, it’s not just about Muggles, is it?”

“Is it? Nobody does magic…”

“Yes, but come on, you _know_ the Chatterjis are wizards. The author just didn’t spell it out because of the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Amit and them? Maybe? Does that make Meenakshi a Squib?”

“Could be. But her little girl is definitely a witch. And when they take Tapan out of his awful school, I’ll bet he’s going to end up at Chaudhury.” The Chaudhury Institute for Magics was the school their parents had attended.

Parvati was twirling her braid thoughtfully around her fingers. “That actually makes more sense. Do you think one of us could write an essay on it for the class, then? Arguing that it’s the author sneakily educating Muggles about wizarding families?”

“If you think of it that way, it’s a bit of an argument against intermarriage,” Padma mused. “Meenakshi may be a Squib, but she and Arun have a horrible marriage, he’s obviously the wrong man for her, she should have married a wizard. And Amit doesn’t end up with Lata in the end, she marries Haresh and he’s boring but they’re both Muggles, right? So the writer wants to say that blood status could be more important than personality.”

Parvati frowned. “I’m not sure…but…isn’t that, you know, sort of an old-fashioned reading? Even Dadu says it’s better to marry in caste but outside blood status than the other way round, if that’s the choice you have to make.”

“Well, but it’s set right after Partition,” Padma reminded her. “It is old-fashioned.”

“Oh, right. I always forget that. It doesn’t feel that way. So all right, if it were set now would Amit marry Lata, then?”

“Well, I think so. You know, the author, what’s his name, Sethi? He can’t be that much older than Bapuji, we could ask him if he remembers him from Chaudhury.”

“No good,” Parvati giggled. “You know Bapuji always says he never paid attention to anything at school but the girls.”

“So you come by it honestly,” Padma teased.

“Oh please, just because I’m not a Ravenclaw and I sometimes turn in an essay that’s eight inches instead of ten…”

Padma reached over and tugged on the end of her twin’s braid, fingering the butterfly pin. “You know what I mean.”

“Mm. Pads?”

“Well, what?”

“When are you going to get a boyfriend?”

Padma spluttered. “Where did that come from, all of a sudden? Anyway, how do you know I don’t have one?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that you could be seeing someone here and keep it a secret? Do you know how small this school is?” Parvati reclaimed her braid. “There isn’t anyone you want, is there?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Padma ran her hands through her own short, spiky hair. “We’re only going to be here such a short time…seven years is nearly up.”

“You make it sound like a spell in itself,” Parvati reflected.

“It might as well be. Seven years under a…and we’ll be in India, I mean at home, next year anyway. Why take the trouble of getting attached? At this point? When we’re only going to lose them all anyway?”

“But isn’t there anyone from Hogwarts you want to keep knowing?” Parvati protested, troubled.

“Oh sure, friends, but…we’ll be so far apart, stay or go. Lisa’s going back to her family on Jersey, Meredith has another year here and Tavia two years…and they’re all English anyway.”

“ _Pads_.”

“Don’t play the naive Gryffindor with me, dearest Pari. Once in a while you want a friend who knows what it’s like, is all. At least we have each other. Didn’t you ever feel sorry for Navinder Singh, surrounded by flower-of-England types like What’s-his-face Diggory?”

Parvati made a face, distracted. “Navinder and his _real Indian girls don’t behave like that_ routine? Sorry for? No thanks. I expect he’s already found a nice Sikh girl to get married to…”

“Well, he didn’t find her at Hogwarts, did he? And what about Shalini and the little Slytherin in first year, what’s her name, Reetu? When we’ve left they’ll be the only Indian girls here.”

“Pads, what’s your point?”

“Oh…” Padma shook her head vigorously. “I want to get out and start living, that’s all. Nice white English school is all very well, but I’ve had just about enough of it. Maybe then I’ll even take your advice and start seeing a man.”

“If any of them can keep up with you,” Parvati teased her, but her mouth was turned down.

“Pari, what’s wrong?”

“I just don’t feel like you about it. I _like_ school, even if most everybody’s white. I’ll miss…” She stopped.

“Don’t tell me,” Padma advised, leaning over for a quick unexpected hug. “I don’t need to know. You make the most of what time is left, Pari. There has to be _some_ point to being a Gryffindor.”

 

Parvati Rohit Patil, Year Seven Muggle Studies Final Paper: Ever Will Be True

…I think that Sebastian’s role in the play is to be loved. We hear about him first when Viola says she doesn’t care if she is in Illyria, “my brother he is in Elysium.” So we see how much she loves her brother. Then there is Antonio, who puts himself in danger because he loves Sebastian. Viola and Antonio are both outsiders, not originally from Illyria, but they end up going into the town because of how much they love Sebastian. And finally he meets Olivia, who is already in love with him (or his alter ego) from before first sight. He is always happy to go along with any of these people who love him. He knows that his sister and his lover (or maybe lovers, Antonio sounds really fond of him for someone who’s just a friend) will guide him where is right for him, because of their love. It’s very romantic, but also a very simplistic idea of the world, and he is lucky it works for him. If this were a tragedy instead of a comedy, he would not be so lucky…

 

december: charms are a girl’s best friend

Parvati thought people didn’t take Charms seriously enough, even the Ravenclaws, although she never actually said this to her sister because she’d get laughed at. Hermione took Charms as seriously as she took any other class, meaning with a deep and unwavering commitment to master everything on the syllabus the first time around, but she didn’t think of it the way Parvati did.

Maybe it was because Professor Flitwick was the teacher. If it had been, well, Sinistra, or even Vector when she was a bit younger (there were some who liked that severe Nordic blond thing, although it wasn’t Parvati’s type at all), more people might have made the connection between Charms and _charms_. But with a little, jolly, bearded, Ravenclaw _uncle_ -type leading the class, nobody ever thought of it as, well, a way to change things. People. Minds. Hearts.

And there were so _many_ ways to do it. More charms than anyone could learn in a lifetime, even a witch’s lifetime. You couldn’t possibly ever learn all of them (although Hermione would like to try if she weren’t so busy being their year’s best all-rounder, and Padma’s eyes gleamed sometimes when she thought about all the new spells she’d be able to dig into when they did go back to India), so you had to choose the ones best suited to you.

Professor McGonagall didn’t look askance at the butterfly clip on the end of Parvati’s plait any more, and that wasn’t just because the gold-stranded fuchsia was so close to Gryffindor colors. The charm only had a _little_ transfiguration in it, really, but it was as well to keep one’s Head of House happy.

She chose Muggle Studies for her time, waiting until Ernie had gone off on one of his painstaking tangents to run a hand down the length of her plait till it touched a particular spot on the butterfly’s wing.

One word under her breath, and the butterfly took flight, floating gently across the classroom, barely flapping its wings. It drifted around waist height, inconspicuous, catching no eyes until it settled lightly on the desk three over and one ahead from hers, currently occupied by an elegant gold-trimmed quill and a sheet of parchment and a delicately freckled elbow.

From her angle Parvati couldn’t see the one dark eyebrow go up, but she felt it happen. Pansy laid one hand flat on her desk, palm up, and the butterfly drifted up again and settled into the soft spot on her palm.

Parvati pictured the words that would be suddenly visible now on the pale freckled skin, written in her own bubbly handwriting, just a few phrases in gold shot through with fuchsia. (Hermione had told her about KISS, _keep it simple, stupid_ , “it’s a Muggle saying…”, “but Hermione, you _don’t_ ,” “yes, well…”.) _Tonight. Midnight. Practice room 3._ Just that. The butterfly itself was the rest of the message.

Deliberately, she hadn’t included an answering function in the spell. She would have to find out the hard way.

 

Pansy Genevieve Clothilde Parkinson (7S), Year Seven Muggle Studies Final Paper: All the Daughters

…Romantic love is not taken seriously by most of the inhabitants of the play—look at Orsino, whom we’re encouraged to poke fun at, or at Malvolio’s ludicrous crush on Olivia, or at Olivia’s swooning over Cesario. What is held quietly but deeply sacred, and never mocked, is family ties—the grief of Viola and Olivia over their dead (or not, as the case may be) brothers, of course, and even Olivia’s reluctance to expel her rebarbative cousin Toby from her household, and perhaps (according to most Muggle commentators on the play) Sir Andrew’s wistful memory, “I was adored once...” …

 

december: pansy and parvati’s big romantic crush

The first thing Pansy sees is the mantle of black hair. With the butterfly clip removed in their afternoon class, Parvati’s tight braid has been gradually unravelling all evening, and now, sitting on the window ledge in the narrow practice room, she’s draped in heavy, glossy, hip-length hair. Pansy has been imagining running her fingers through that hair for so long now that she’s left tongue-tied for a moment.

But that will never do; Pansy Parkinson isn’t lost for words, ever. “I have something for you,” she says, managing not to clear her throat nervously.

“How sweet,” Parvati responds, and yes, she sounds a little off-balance too.

Pansy opens her hand and the butterfly takes wing again, drifting back to Parvati to perch on her shoulder—but not before passing deliberately across her face, brushing its wings delicately over her lips.

Afterwards she can’t remember who moved forward first; only that they’re in each other’s arms.

It’s a world-shaking kiss, the kind of kiss you daydream about for years before and after, the kind of kiss so long and lavish that it overwhelms you with knowledge and with unknown possibilities. Pansy has a fleeting memory of that famous wizarding photograph of the Auror kissing the St. Mungo’s nurse the day Grindelwald was defeated, sweeping her off her feet again and again, both of them too absorbed ever to glance at whoever might be viewing the photograph, and then the image floats away again in the breathtaking fragrance of fennel and peppermint.

“The problem here, Parvati,” she says finally, when her mouth is free again and they both have their breath back, “is that both of us are romantics.”

“Oh really,” Parvati scoffs, stroking the curve of Pansy’s breast through her robes. Her hair is wrapped around both of them together, like a double Lady Godiva. “I can’t think of anyone less romantic than either one of us. P for Pansy, P for Parvati, P for pragmatic.”

“You sound like that Ravenclaw sister of yours.” Pansy snuggles closer in. “But you’re wrong. You don’t want a careless fling any more than I do. We both want the great love affair of our lives.”

“Juliet and Juliet?” Parvati offers dryly.

“If you like, except I’m not planning to die any time soon, and you’d better not be either. The thing is, though, if you were a boy—“

“—or you were Indian—“

“—fair enough, one way or the other, we’d be planning to live happily ever after, right?”

Parvati doesn’t answer that one, but Pansy feels the other girl’s cheek brush her hair.

“Well, if we can’t have our big romance out in the open, let’s have the most damned romantic secret love affair anybody ever came up with. We’ll leave each other love notes hidden behind paintings—only the ones with doomed love for their themes, though—all over the castle. We’ll sneak out of our dorms to steal kisses on the battlements at midnight. In thunderstorms. We’ll serenade each other with ariel spells that no one else can hear, playing Rachmaninoff and Fauré and Cole Porter. We’ll stare at each other over all the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws at breakfast, but only when nobody is looking.”

“Not at breakfast,” Parvati objects. “I never do my hair properly until after breakfast.”

“Maybe I was wrong about how romantic you were,” Pansy huffs, but then she hears the way Parvati’s voice wavered out of true on the last word. “Oh, sweetheart.”

Parvati gulps a little, leaning in a little closer still. “My sister would say we’re not trying hard enough to subvert,” she says, more or less steadily.

“Tell her the word is _invert_ , thank you very much,” Pansy sniffs, earning a slightly watery giggle.

“Oh…no, that one I think we’ve got down, and she knows it. It’s…oh, I never listen when she’s explaining it…I guess she just means we’re being good girls. Doing what they expect us to do. But I mean, I have to.”

“Your parents would disown you, would they?” Pansy isn’t sure what her own mother would do, but it doesn’t matter.

“It doesn’t matter,” Parvati echoes her thoughts, eerily. Her voice is steadier now. “It’s not just _me_. Or now. There’s a whole…a whole pattern…it’s like school, like being a Gryffindor or a Slytherin. I don’t want to be the one who breaks it.”

“I don’t either,” Pansy whispers, telling the truth straight out in a most un-Slytherin way. Now it’s her voice that shakes, and she presses her face into the point where Parvati’s neck meets her shoulder, under a waterfall of hair.

They sit still for a moment, holding each other, hearing their hearts break a little.

“Well,” Parvati murmurs finally, her voice liquid, her breath soft on Pansy’s ear. “We have six months. How romantic can we be in six months? Because I have a reputation to uphold. I’m not letting some Slytherin out-romantic me just like that.”

Pansy tilts her head and kisses Parvati’s throat, feeling the pulse throb under her lips, until they both shiver helplessly. “Challenge accepted,” she murmurs, to the beating heart.

 


End file.
